;
God is Great
For He’s the God of knowing and unknowing
Shows and tells at wizened, weathered will, and yet He
Hears and will consider prayers and tears, will
Weigh wildest hope and wilder worry in His palms
Will bear our heaviest burdens in His arms
For He’s the God of burdens and of breakings
Of knitting up of bones and every broken thing
He’s candy-striping comforter and nurse
Made ready by his stripes; He’s midwife and maker
Physician, coroner, and undertaker
For He’s the God of veils and of unveilings
He covers with His hand and with His wings outstretched
Henpecks and shepherds, grunts, corrals us home
With sidelong glarings and perturbed and softening sighs
Gathers us with wounds and bright, cherubic eyes
For He’s the God of jollity and laughter
Of fellowship and friends, of wholesome foolishness
Of good, of jolly good and Godly joy
Of heartfelt joys and heartfelt sorrows grievous grim
But to be borne that no one may deny Him.
Jonathon Penny is a poet, a scholar, a husband, a father, a cruncher of data, and, in relative poverty of spirit and blindness of mind, as much a disciple as he can manage. He has been published in Tyler Chadwick’s Fire in the Pasture, Dialogue, Victorian Violet Press, Mormon Midrashim, Sunstone, Everyday Mormon Writer, Gangway Magazine, Lowly Seraphim, and at Wilderness Interface Zone. He has several chapbooks in development, and will soon be publishing literary prose and poetry for children and youths of Percival P. Pennywhistle, PhD, and other fortunate souls under Pease Porridge Press.
Read more of Penny’s work here.